A Nextmas Carol: Three
Posted by:
Jon (---.abel.net.uk)
Date: December 13, 2002 02:49PM
<HTML><B>3. Christmas Present</B>
“Wake up, Eb, will you?”
“Oh, not again. Don’t you ever give up? What is it this time?”
“We have a Christmas present for you, Scrooge.”
Scrooge sat up. With Marley was a grim looking gentleman with a mouth like a rat trap.
“What sort of present?”
“Like I said, Eb, a Christmas present; the present of Christmas, if you like.”
Scrooge scowled.
“Don’t play silly games with me, Jake. I can always call Big Tony again, you know.”
“No game, Eb. Alf here is going to show you what Christmas is like in the present. OK, Alf, do your stuff.” There was a very snazzy slow dissolve, and Scrooge found himself looking at Bob Cratchit, working in Scrooge’s own firm. The door opened, and Scrooge himself walked in.
“How come I’m there?” Scrooge asked Marley; “I can’t be there and here at the same time, surely?”
“Quantum,” replied Marley. “So long as you never know where you are and when you are at the same time, you can be anywhere.” And that was all the explanation Scrooge got. Meanwhile Cratchit was talking.
“But, boss,” he was saying, “it’s Christmas Eve!”
“Christmas Schmistmas,” replied the other Scrooge. “You stay here until the Ryder case has been written up in full. There’s a lot of money involved.”
“But Boss, my family – “
“You wanted to spend time with your family, you should of took a union job. You want to be a lawyer, Cratchit, you stay here and graft.” He stopped, and looked suspiciously at a bag of sweets on Cratchit’s desk. “Didn’t I ban candy from the office, Cratchit?” He picked the bag up, and looked inside it. “And I especially bar humbugs. Lose them, Cratchit.”
“Yes, boss. Sorry, boss.”
Alf muttered something to Marley at this point, and there was another dissolve, and a new scene presented itself to view, that of a room in a house.
“This,” said Marley, “is Bob’s house, eight hours later.”
The door to the room opened, and Bob Cratchit entered, followed by a shrewish looking woman in an apron.
“Where in hell have you been?”, she was asking.
“I told you, working,” Bob replied, with a touch of asperity.
“You expect me to believe that? I reckon you’ve got a floozy somewhere, Bob Cratchit, and if I ever find out you have …”
“Dammit, how many times do I have to tell you? There is no other woman! Jeez, I haven’t got time to commit adultery, when I’m working all the hours for that bastard Scrooge!” Mrs. Cratchit sniffed.
“I don’t believe even a tightwad like Ebenezer Scrooge would make a guy work late on Christmas Eve,” she observed, tartly.
“Yeah, yeah, yadda yadda, whatever. Get me a drink, will you? Where are the kids?”
“Upstairs. You want to see them?”
“Like hell I do. I have a headache like you wouldn’t believe. Just get me a whiskey.”
Mrs. Cratchit sniffed again.
“You can just get your own, Bob Cratchit. I got better things to do than wait on you.” And with that she flounced out, leaving Bob to pour his own whiskey. He raised the glass in an ironical toast.
“To that slave-driving, marriage-wrecking old bastard Ebenezer Scrooge,” he said, “the Founder of the Feast. May he rot in hell.”
And the image dissolved once more, leaving the observers back in Scrooge’s bedroom.
“Well, there you have it,” Marley said, turning to his old partner. “Thanks to you making him work all the time, Bob’s marriage breaks down, he falls behind with the alimony when he takes up with a stripper from Spokane, his ex never has enough money to pay for Tim’s healthcare, the kid dies, has no children, nobody saves the world, everybody else dies. Feel guilty yet?”
“Why would I feel guilty? If he wanted to skive for a living, he should have been a teacher. And why would I be nice to some guy who hates me that much? Give me a break, guys, and don’t waste your time or mine.”
Marley shrugged.
“Well, I told them it would come to this,” he remarked resignedly; “hit it, Alf, I got to go and break out the real heavy weapons.”
Scrooge’s only answer was a snore.</HTML>